To get at the history of the Book of Proverbs, several inquiries must be raised. When were the proverbs composed? The book, like the Book of Psalms, is confessedly an anthology, containing various accumulations, and both by style and maturing thought bearing the marks of different ages. When were the successive compilations made? And, finally, when did the strain of literature here represented reach that point of self-conscious unity and coordination which justified its being reckoned with as a strain by itself and choosing the comprehensive name Wisdom? What makes these inquiries hard to answer is the fact that these proverbs are precepts for the common people, relating to ordinary affairs of the village, the market, and the field, and move in lines remote from politics and dynastic vicissitudes and wars. They are, to an extent far more penetrative and pervasive than law or prophecy, the educative literature on which the sturdy rank and file of the nation was nourished. `Where there is no vision, the people let loose,' says a Hezekian proverb (Pr 29:18); but so they are also when there is no abiding tonic of social convention and principle. Precisely this latter it is which this Book of Prey in a large degree reveals; and in course of time its value was so felt that, as we have seen, it could rank itself as an asset of life by the side of vision. It represents, in a word, the human movement toward self-directiveness and self-reliance, without supine dependence on ruler or public sentiment (compare Pr 29:25-26). When and how was this sane and wholesome communal fiber developed?
1. Under the Kings:
When Solomon and his court made the mashal an elegant fad, they builded better than they knew. They gave to the old native form of the proverb and parable, as reduced to epigrammatic mold and polish, the eclat of a popular literature. This was done orally at first (Solomon spoke his proverbs, 1Ki 4:32-33); but the recording of such carefully expressed utterances could not be long delayed; perhaps this brief style coupe was the most natural early exercise in the new transition from the unwieldly cuneiform to the use of papyrus and a more flexible alphabet, which probably came in with the monarchy. At any rate, here was the medium for a practical didactic literature, applied to the matters of daily life and intercourse to which in Solomon's time the nation was enthusiastically awake. There is no valid reason for denying to Solomon, or at least to his time, the initiation of the Solomonic mashal; and if, as has been suggested, the name "proverbs of Solomon" designates rather literary species than personal authorship, the title of the whole book (Pr 1:1), as well as the headings of sections (Pr 10:1; 25:1), may be given in entire good faith, whatever the specific time or personal authorship of the utterances. Nor is there anything either in recorded history or the likelihood of the case to make improbable that the activity of the "men of Hezekiah" means just what is said; these men of letters were adding this supplementary collection (Pr 25:1-28 through Pr 29:1-27) to a body of proverbs that already existed and were recognized as Solomon's. This would put the composition of the main body of the Proverbs (chapters 10 through 29) prior to the reign of Hezekiah. They represent therefore the chief literary instruction available to the people in the long period of the Kings from Solomon onward, a period which otherwise was very meagerly supplied. The Mosaic Law, as we gather from the finding of the Law in the time of Josiah (2Ki 22:1-20), was at best a sequestered thing in the keeping--or neglect--of priests and judges; the prophetic word was a specific message for great national emergencies; the accumulations of sacred song were the property of the temple and the cult; what then was there for the education of the people? There were indeed the folk-tales and catechetical legends of their heroic history; but there were also, most influential of all, these wise sayings of the sages, growing bodies of precept and parable, preserved in village centers, published in the open places by the gate (compare Job 29:7), embodying the elements of a common-sense religion and citizenship, and representing views of life which were not only Hebrew, but to a great extent international among the neighbor kingdoms. Understood so, these Solomonic proverbs furnish incomparably the best reflection we have of the religious and social standards of the common people, during a period otherwise meagerly portrayed. And from it we can understand what a sterling fiber of character existed after all, and how well worth preserving for a unique mission in the world, in spite of the idolatrous corruptions that invaded the sanctuaries, the self-pleasing unconcern of the rulers and the pessimistic denunciations of the prophets.
2. The Concentrative Point:
For the point in the Hebrew literary history when these scattered Solomonic proverbs were recognized as a homogeneous strain of thought and the compilations were made and recommended as Wisdom, we can do no better, I think, than to name the age of Israel's literary prime, the age of Hezekiah. The "men of Hezekiah" did more than append their supplementary section (Pr 25:1-28 through Pr 29:1-27); the words "these also" (gam 'elleh) in their heading imply it.
See HEZEKIAH,THE MEN OF .
I apprehend the order and nature of their work somehow thus: Beginning with the classic nucleus (Pr 10:1-32 through Pr 22:16) (see above,II , 2), which may have come to them in two subsections (Pr 10:1-32 through Pr 15:1-33; 16:1-33 through Pr 22:16), they put these together as the proverbs most closely associated with Solomon, without much attempt at systematizing, substantially as these had accumulated through the ages in the rough order of their developing form and thought; compiling thus, in their zeal for the literary treasures of the past, the body of educational literature which lay nearest at hand, a body adapted especially, though not exclusively, to the instruction of the young and immature. This done, there next came to their knowledge a remarkable body of "words of the wise" (Pr 22:17 through Pr 24:22), which had evidently been put together by request as a vade mecum for some persons in responsible position, and which were prefaced by a recommendation of them as "words of truth" designed to promote "trust in Yahweh" (Pr 22:19-21)--which latter, as we know from Isaiah, was the great civic issue of Hezekiah's time. With this section naturally goes the little appendix of "sayings of the wise" (Pr 24:23-34), added probably at about the same time. These two sections, which seem to open the collection to matter beyond the distinctive Solomonic mashal, are, beyond the rest of the book, in the tone of the introductory section (Pr 1:1-33 through Pr 9:1-18), which latter, along with the Hezekian appendix (Pr 25:1-28 through Pr 29:1-27), was added, partly as a new composition, partly as incorporating some additional findings (compare for instance the completion of the poem on the sluggard, Pr 6:6-11). Thus, by the addition of this introductory section, the Book of Proverbs was recognized as a unity, provided with a preface and initial proposition (Pr 1:1-6,7), and launched with such hortatory material as had already, on a smaller scale, introduced the third section. This part not only contains the praise of Wisdom as a human endowment, sharing in the mind and purpose of the divine (Pr 8:22-31), but it has become aware also of the revelatory value of tushiyah (Pr 2:7; 3:21; 8:14), or chastened intuition (see above,III , 3), and dares to aspire, in its righteous teachableness, to the intimacy or secret friendship of Yahweh (codho, 3:32). All this indicates the holy self-consciousness to which Wisdom has attained.
I see no cogent reason for postponing the substantial completion of the Book of Proverbs beyond the time of Hezekiah. The words of Agur and of King Lemuel, with the final acrostic poem, may be later additions; but their difference in tone and workmanship is just as likely to be due to the fact that they are admitted, in the liberal spirit of the compilers, from foreign stores of wisdom. For spiritual clarity and intensity they do not rise to the height of the native Hebrew consciousness; and they incline to an artificial structure which suggests that the writer's interest is divided between sincere tushiyah and literary skill. For the sake of like-minded neighbors, however, something may be forgiven.
3. Its Stage in Progressive Wisdom:
It is too early in the history of Wisdom to regard this Book of Proverbs as an articulated and coordinated system. It is merely what it purports to be, a collected body of literature having a common bearing and purpose; a literature of reverent and intelligent self-culture, moving among the ordinary relations of life, and not assuming to embody any mystic disclosures of truth beyond the reach of human reason. As such, it has a vocabulary and range of ideas of its own, which distinguishes it from other strains of literature. This is seen in those passages outside of the Book of Proverbs which deliberately assume, for some specific purpose, the Wisdom dialect. In Isa 28:23-29, the prophet, whom the perverse rulers have taunted with baby-talk (Isa 28:9-10), appeals to them with the characteristic Wisdom call to attention (Isa 28:23), and in illustrations drawn from husbandry proves to them that this also is from Yahweh of hosts, `who is transcendent in counsel, preeminent in tushiyah' (Isa 28:29)--teaching them thus in their own vaunted idiom. In Mic 6:9-15, similarly, calling in tushiyah to corroborate prophecy ("the voice of Yahweh," qol Yahweh, wethushiyah, Mic 6:9), the prophet speaks of the natural disasters that men ought to deduce from their abuse of trade relations, evidently appealing to them in their own favorite strain of thinking. Both these passages seem to reflect a time when the Wisdom dialect was prevalent and popular, and both are concerned to call in sound human intuition as an ally of prophecy. At the same time, as prophets have the right to do, they labor to give revelation the casting vote; the authentic disclosure of truth from Yahweh is their objective, not the mere luxury of making clever observations on practical life. All this coincides, in the Wisdom sphere, with what in Isaiah's and Micah's time was the supreme issue of state, namely trust in Yahweh, rather than in crooked human devices (compare Isa 28:16; 29:15); and it is noteworthy that this is the venture of Wisdom urged by the editors of Proverbs in their introductory exhortations (compare Isa 22:19; 3:5-8). In other words, these editors are concerned with inducing a spiritual attitude; and so in their literary strain they make their book an adjunct in the movement toward spirituality which Isaiah is laboring to promote. As yet, however, its findings are still in the peremptory stage, stated as absolute and unqualified truths; it has not reached the sober testing of fact and interrogation of motive which it must encounter in order to become a seasoned philosophy of life. Its main pervading thesis--that righteousness in the fear of God is wisdom and bound for success, that wickedness is fatuity and bound for destruction--is eternally sound; but it must make itself good in a world where so many of the enterprises of life seem to come out the other way, and where there is so little appreciation of spiritual values. Nor is the time of skepticism and rigid test long in coming. Two psalms of this period (as I apprehend) (Ps 73:1-28 and Ps 49:1-20) concern themselves with the anomaly of the success of the wicked and the trials of the righteous; the latter pointedly adopting the Wisdom or mashal style of utterance (Ps 49:3-4), both laboring to induce a more inward and spiritual attitude toward the problem. It remains, however, for the Book of Job to take the momentous forward step of setting wisdom on the unshakable foundation of spiritual integrity, which it does by subjecting its findings to the rigid test of fact and its motives to a drastic Satanic sifting. It is thus in the Book of Job, followed later by the Book of Ecclesiastes, that the Wisdom strain of literature, initiated by the Proverbs of Solomon, finds its Old Testament culmination.
John Franklin Genung